"For what reason?" she retorted. "For your own pleasure or ours? Friends, I appeal to you. Did this man's presence ever bring one smile to our lips, or engender one kindly thought or feeling?"
"Never," answered Reuben Thorne; and "Never," answered the others.
"His life was a curse to him, and to those whom a sad fortune placed in his power. I ask again, why is he here?"
"Your words are harsh," said Stephen Viner, raising his hand as if for mercy. "Your tone is pitiless."
Dinah Dim laughed scornfully. "This man talks of pity," she exclaimed, "in whose cruel breast no spark of it ever dwelt. A pretty preacher, truly!"
"I have told you," he said, in a low tone, "that I was constrained to come to-night. Say that I am here for judgment."
"What kind of judgment," demanded Dinah Dim, "can you expect from those who know you? Has not your own heart punished you sufficiently?"
"It has," he replied, placing his hand to his breast with a gasp of passion. "Can I not make atonement?"
"What atonement, after all these years?"
"I can ask their forgiveness; I can tell them, as I tell you, that I repent of my cruelty, and that if the years could roll back--alas for me that they cannot! I would act differently."